Broadcast media professional, director and social media consultant Duane Conder needs reliable storage that also performs at a high level.
That’s why Conder utilizes the OWC Mercury Rack Pro in his professional workflow that includes work on TV shows on the Pursuit Channel, Hunt Channel, CarbonTV and Sportsman Channel.
The Mercury Rack Pro features a single external mini-SAS interface that not only reduces cable clutter, but also provides four full channels of data (one per drive) through a single external mini-SAS cable. It’s like having four separate eSATA/SAS cables but in a single package.
Designed with the demands of server, audio production, and video production environments like Conder’s in mind, the OWC Mercury Rack Pro four Bay 1U Solutions provide data transfer rates of up to 24Gb/s data rates.
Here’s what Conder had to say about his Mercury Rack Pro setup and how it helps his professional workflow.
The Set Up
“You’ll see on the rear panel shot that each is connected via eSATA. These eight eSATA cables are actually two eSATA-to-mini-SAS adapter cables. The mini-SAS end plugs into two Highpoint cards (models 2271 & 2272) in an expansion chassis. The 2271 drives four of the OWC Mercury Rack Pros, with another mini-SAS slot available, the 2272 drives the other four racks and four internal SSDs mounted in the expansion chassis. The expansion chassis is connected via Thunderbolt to a 2013 Mac Pro 3.5GHz 6-Core.”
How the Racks Are Used
“The bottom three [racks] are in a RAID 0 configuration – 48TB – the screenshot (see image below) is the read/write results on these three racks only. These are my online working drives for episodic TV show finishing. All the rest are purely for legacy archive and safety. The legacy drives only need to be accessed maybe twice a year; however, I wanted them in a chassis so they could be exercised more often which helps extend the life of the drive. Once the drive is five years old, the data is transferred to a new drive if the data is worth keeping- sometimes it’s not.”
The Scalable Solution
“The OWC Mercury Rack Pro is a great cost-effective solution for faster access to the legacy material, faster offline end-of-day safety transfers and mini-SAS speeds on a RAID 0 configuration. Having the individual racks allow me to power up only the ones that are needed at the time. These racks run much quieter and cooler than the G-Speed chassis they replaced. What’s more, I’m totally scalable with RAID size and speeds.”
For more on the OWC Mercury Rack Pro and how it can help your professional workflow, please visit eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Rack_Mount/
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About Duane Conder
Duane Conder is involved in two emerging businesses and one established company. DCONDER.LLC which provides turnkey new, traditional and social media solutions for clients. He has also documented the work done by American Humane in the Louisiana Flood region in August 2016. Conder is also a Founding Partner of Pin4Life, LLC, a company that provides fundraising solutions. More can be found at dconder.com.
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Thanks Jarrod, nice write up!
Hi, Duane. Thanks for sharing your setup. Looks great!